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Middle & Senior School Library: Magazines

Popular Magazines vs. Trade Magazines vs. Scholarly Journals

An important part of gathering and evaluating sources for your research is knowing the difference between popular, scholarly, and trade publications. ​

  • Popular magazine articles are typically written by journalists to entertain or inform a general audience. (Example: J-14)
  • Scholarly journal articles are written by researchers or experts in a particular field. They use specialized vocabulary, have extensive citations, and are often peer-reviewed. (Example: Journal of Educational Psychology).
  • Trade publications may be written by experts in a certain industry, but they are not considered scholarly, as they share general news, trends, and opinions, rather than advanced research, and are not peer-reviewed (Example: Air Line Pilot Magazine)

University of Texas Libraries. (n.d.). Popular, Scholarly, or Trade?. https://guides.lib.utexas.edu/popularscholarlytrade

Note: If you are looking for scholarly journal articles, the best place to start is a scholarly database search.

Limestone University Library, (n.d.). Comparing Source Types Chart. https://libguides.limestone.edu/ld.php?content_id=26147047

Magazine Titles Available on Sora

Our digital collection on Sora includes 60+ magazine titles. All titles are simultaneous use (meaning each issue can be accessed by an unlimited number of students at once) and most include back issues.

Print (and Digital) Magazines at the Library

In addition to digital titles available on Sora, our library subscribes to several titles in print, with accompanying digital editions also available. You may need to use our resource passwords to access articles online.